Some Things Get Better with Age....Others Not So Much

I've been feeling more than the usual aches and pains recently in the garden.

Blame it on the fact that my wife and I planted four trees, several large shrubs and dozens of perennials over the past few weeks.

After all the heavy digging, it was ironic when I somehow strained a back muscle planting a tiny 4-inch Salvia greggii.

Don't worry -- the pain isn't too bad (as long as I don't bend over). ;-)

So I've been thinking about how age is reflected in the garden. I don't know about you, but when I plant a perennial, a shrub or a tree (most anything but an annual), I have high hopes that the plant will get better and stronger with time.

Sometimes, this wish comes true. Perennial Lemon Queen Sunflower looks about five-times bigger, bushier and stronger than it did last year.

Perennial "Lemon Queen" Sunflower doing its best impression of a shrub
only a month after emerging from dormancy

All the aronias have been going from strength to strength in the past couple of years -- more flowers, more berries, more healthy foliage, taller plants.

But then there are other plants that seem to have a tougher time of it with each passing year. (I can sympathize!!)

I'm talking about plants like Gaura lindheimeri. I've seesawed back and forth in the past on whether I love this plant (gorgeous pink flowers over a long bloom season) or whether I'm ready to shovel-prune it (mass of ugly dead stems in the spring that seem to take forever to green up).

Gaura lindheimeri in late April. Not looking promising.

This year, I think Gaura is trying to save me the trouble of making up my mind. All of the gauras are a little later than usual in making their spring comeback. When I didn't see any growth at all, I started hacking down through the dead stems and found that many of them were rotted and could pretty much twist away in my hands. Not a good sign.

It looks like what they say about Gaura needing good drainage really is true. And my heavy clay soil just isn't cutting it.

(I know that when some perennials start dying out in the middle, it's time to try to divide them, but I've heard that gaura is taprooted and therefore does not take well to division. Has anyone successfully divided a gaura before?)

That said, when I ripped away all the dead foliage, at least I discovered what looks like a bit of healthy foliage on the outskirts of the plant. Maybe I'll get at least one more good year out of the gaura? And I think there are a couple of seedling plants nearby.

A tiny bit of healthy foliage offers hope that a piece of Gaura may have survived to bloom another day

That's more than can be said for Russian Sage. Initially one of our favorite plants due to its silvery foliage and pretty blue flowers that attract bees, Russian Sage has gone downhill year by year. The experts say to cut Russian Sage back in the spring when it starts leafing out, but the plants aren't regrowing any leaves on the old wood, they seem to be sending up new shoots from the base. That creates a bit of an issue with new foliage emerging from a mound of dead wood.

New foliage (surrounded by dead wood) growing from the base of Russian Sage 

Worse than that, much of the new foliage starts wilting and browning within a few days of unfurling. This happened in earlier years too, but the whole process seems to be happening even faster this year. I suspect poor drainage may be the culprit here too.

New Russian Sage foliage wilting just days after appearing. Not a pretty sight.

I tried cutting away as much dead foliage as I could and leaving the healthiest looking new stems, but I suspect that these Russian Sages may all go to the great compost pile in the sky before the year is out.

Leaving the best Russian Foliage intact in the hopes it will serve as the core of a healthy plant this year

What's the lesson here? I guess for me it's a reminder not to rush to judgment. For better and worse, I'm often quick to praise a plant to the skies or heap scorn upon it.

Patience....Patience.

Sometimes a plant that soars in the spring will flame out before the year is done. Other times (frequently?) it can take a plant several years to settle into a new home, prove its mettle and show its true colors.

Which plants in your garden get stronger year by year? And which ones have petered out over time?

Eight Top Performers from 2013: Creeping Raspberry, Aucuba, Camellias and More!

Apologies for the recent silence.

I was traveling for a while and then sank into a curmudgeonly funk due to November's extraordinarily cold weather.

Having shaken off that funk, this feels like a good time to look back on some of the lessons learned from 2013. I'll start by looking at the best performers - either new discoveries or proven favorites.

Creeping Raspberry

Rubus calycinoides, Creeping Raspberry - Winner, especially in sunny situations. As you can see from the photo above, Creeping Raspberry blankets the ground, preventing weeds, but so far it has not displayed any tendency to spread out of control. (Everything I've read about this plant is that it spreads through above-ground runners, not below-ground roots, so it seems unlikely that the plant would travel underground and pop up feet away, as can happen with other sneaky groundcovers like Blue Star Creeper.) Note that this photo, like the others below, was taken a few weeks ago. Since then, cold temperatures have added much more reddish tones to the plant's leaves. I'm looking forward to seeing the changeover from old to new leaves in the spring and also to seeing what this plant is capable of doing in 2014. Indeed, I'm happy enough with this plant that I plan to add several more specimens in the spring. After that, I imagine I'll be able to separate rooted runners and propagate it within the garden and should not need to buy any more for the foreseeable future. I'm also keeping my fingers crossed for flowers and berries next year, but maybe my hopes are too high in that department.

UPDATE 4/2017 - I ended up removing creeping raspberry from the garden in 2015. See this post to read why it got the heave-ho. (I should say that even though it was a royal pain to dig up and remove creeping raspberry, at least removal was just a one-time job. It didn't try to return from any rootlets like Ajuga, hardy blue plumbago and bloody geranium tend to do.)

Ajuga genevensis

Ajuga reptans "Burgundy Glow"

Ajuga - Winner (mostly), Ajuga is an unpredictable plant. In one place, it seems to have petered out. Perhaps it got too much shade? But most of the others I've scattered around the garden are thriving, especially in partial sun settings, with one doing well even in full sun. My favorite may be Ajuga genevensis, it's not variegated or flashy, but it does produce a dense, low carpet of pleasant green leaves. Ajuga genevensis also seems to hold up to cold temperatures better Ajuga reptans. So why is the genevensis variety so much harder to find in nurseries and catalogs??

The purplish ajugas like Burgundy Glow are beautiful, but they do seem to have a tendency to revert to a darker-leaved plant, so you may have to keep a sharp eye out for those reverts and remove or transplant them if you want to keep a patch consistently purple. I like that ajuga is evergreen in zone 6-7, although it does get tattered over winter. I like the springtime flowers. I like that it seems relatively tough and spreads at a moderate, but not ridiculous pace. I like that it seems relatively easy to uproot and keep in bounds if necessary. My goal in the future is to have mostly plants as groundcover and not much mulch. I see groundcovers like ajuga and creeping raspberry being a big part of that plan. In 2014, I'm eager to try the Chocolate Chip variety, which I hear is an outstanding ajuga.

UPDATE 4/2017 - Way too aggressive in my garden. It wants to create a monoculture (at least at ground level), it's unattractive for a good bit of the year and seems to offer very few ecosystem benefits. In my garden, Ajuga reptans does suffer random dieback sometimes, but the other species (A. genevensis and A. tenorii) seemed to thrive and spread, usually by rhizome, but occasionally also by seed. I wish I could say that I'd evicted this from the garden, but it's an ongoing effort and in some places - especially where it has insinuated itself among the roots of shrubs or other perennials - I'm not sure what to do. I can't really dig deeply in those places to remove the roots completely and spraying seems to run the risk of damaging the other plants, so I'll probably just keep pulling and pulling until the Ajuga (hopefully) gives up the ghost.

Aucuba japonica, Gold Dust Plant - Winner, planted in autumn 2012, so far my Aucuba shrub has thrived. The variegated leaves really light up a dark corner. I hope to add more Aucuba to the landscape - particularly as having multiple male and female plants would give me the hope of getting large ornamental red berries. Warning -- those berries are apparently inedible and slightly poisonous for humans, but hopefully birds would enjoy them. Note that the leaves in this photo are a bit droopy. That's just because I took the photo on a cold day. When temperatures are below freezing, Aucuba droops. Think of it as your own biological thermometer. As temps warm, the leaves perk back up. Loving this plant so far.

UPDATE 4/2017 - Still loving Aucuba. I should say that while it has done well in partial shade in my front foundation, it struggled when I tried a green-leafed variety in a more sunny, exposed setting. It also got chomped to pieces by deer when placed out in the landscape. But it's been a fantastic evergreen through heat, drought, cold, snow, ice, etc. in my east-facing foundation bed. I should really post an update photo to show what it looks like now.

Sorry I don't have a beautiful Camellia flower to show you. Many of the early-blooming ones have finished or got zapped by freezes. This Camellia japonica has not started flowering yet, but it has many fat buds that hold the promise of a beautiful show in the spring!

Camellias - Winners, with reservations. All the camellias in my garden so far have done fairly well with minimal supplemental water and just a bit of acidic fertilizer. This November, I swapped out a mildew-stricken crape myrtle and added yet another camellia - Winter's Joy. Supposedly hardy to zone 6 and with an upright, narrow growth pattern (10-12 feet high by 4-feet wide), I hope this camellia will perform as well as the others have.

But that's not to say everything is perfect with the camellias. (Has there ever been perfection in a garden since the time of Adam and Eve?)

One of the camellias I added last year dropped a lot of buds this winter in our November cold snap (lows in the teens) and barely flowered at all.  Apparently, camellias (some more than others) are susceptible to this sort of bud drop when temperatures fluctuate wildly, as they have done so far in Middle Tennessee this winter, from a low of 12 degrees Fahrenheit in November to a high of 76 degrees Fahrenheit last week.

And then there's the whole issue of zone pushing. Many camellias are only listed as being hardy to zone 8 or the warmer parts of zone 7. But there are more and more camellias - such as those in the Ice Angels(R) series - that are advertised as being hardy down to zone 6, which technically should mean that they are able to survive temperatures as low as -10 Fahrenheit. Fortunately, I have not encountered anything like those temps since I started gardening Middle TN. We're officially listed as being on the colder side of zone 7 these days (0-5 Fahrenheit maximum low temperature in an average winter), so there should be plenty of camellias that survive here.

But I have to recognize that I'm pushing zones here a bit. I'm thinking that I should look for camellias that flower either early or late - or ones that are known for having especially hardy flowerbuds. After all, I'd like to have camellias not just for their evergreen leaves (which are attractive on their own), but also for their flowers. But many of those flowers and flowerbuds will be killed by sub-freezing temperatures - certainly by temperatures in the teens or low 20s, so then I just have the sad spectacle of fallen buds or melted flowers on the stem. (As this source says, "Most blooms freeze, brown and turn to mush at about 32F.") I guess this is why I don't see many other camellias planted in my neighborhood or other Nashville area gardens. I imagine that Camellias are probably best suited for climates reliably warmer than Middle Tennessee - such as parts of the Deep South where it doesn't get to be 12 degrees in November!

That said, I still like the camellias a whole lot. If I pick the right varieties, I should be able to have a nice flower show in late autumn (October to November) and spring (March and April) even in harsh winters. And in mild winters, like the ones we had the last two years, I might even get to see flowers all winter long.

UPDATE 4/2017 - I still love the two camellias that were already planted right next to the porch steps when we bought the house. I mean, they're clearly too close to the foundation, but maybe that's why they have survived and done pretty well over the years while other camellias that I bought and tried to use in more exposed locations got blasted by cold winter winds? I like that we have both a Camellia sasanqua (blooms in late autumn, attracts honeybees) and C. japonica (does not seem as attractive to pollinators, but it does bloom for months in late winter to spring. In fact, it's just finishing up now in late April and I can see on my Instagram feed that it started blooming in February, so that's at least 8 weeks of blooms!!)

Dixie Wood Fern

Dryopteris x australis, Dixie wood fern - Winner, the books call this native fast-growing and drought-tolerant. The books would be correct (so far). This is my only fern and I'm loving it. I'd like to add more ferns, but I don't have many of the shady spots that ferns like. I planted Dixie in the spring, so this is my first winter with the plant, but since it's hardy to zone 5, I presume it will overwinter here just fine (although sadly, I don't believe it's evergreen). It's worth noting that the fronds which fell over were presumably felled by a cold snap. I imagine those fronds are dead and will eventually decay, but for now they are still green and adding a beautiful ferny presence to the garden even splayed on the ground.

UPDATE 4/2017 - Still a nice, solid performer, although the persistent old fronds are pretty messy. I guess they do decay, but slooooooowly. Honestly, I'm not that big into ferns in the garden at the moment, but I still have a few, and this is probably my least favorite at the moment. Ouch. Sorry about that, Dixie wood fern.

Coneflower seedheads

Echinacea purpurea, Purple Coneflowers - Still Winners. The coneflowers bloomed all summer and into autumn, with the clumps getting larger and more beautiful as they mature. Since I leave the seedheads for the birds, I'm starting to see more and more self-sown seedlings pop up here and there, so hopefully I'll have many more coneflowers next year. I love them for their natural beauty, plus of course for the way they attract bees and birds. This year, I also tried a trick I read on the Internet -- I cut off entire mature seedheads and buried them in various places throughout the garden beds - including in some partial shade spots. (So far, all my coneflowers are growing in very sunny settings - I'm curious to see how they'd do in a morning sun / afternoon shade situation). I'll post an update next spring as to whether this was a successful propagation technique.

UPDATE 4/2017 - Purple coneflowers perform fine in the garden. The straight species ones are dependable and come back year after year. The flowers are pretty and attract pollinators (especially bumblebees), while birds do eat the seeds from the seedheads. That said, purple coneflowers can look pretty awful in a drought, especially when growing in full sun. They seem most robust and floriferous when growing with morning sun and afternoon shade. They can seed around quite a bit (especially if you leave the seedheads standing over the winter for the the birds), but seedlings (or even established plants) are easy to pull and remove if you find yourself with too much E. purpurea.

Gaura lindheimeri 'Siskiyou Pink'

Gaura lindheimeri - Still Winners. Love, love, love the gauras. Since it didn't get too hot this year, they bloomed pretty much from late spring all the way through to autumn. The big, billowy plants attracted lots of bees, ladybugs and other beneficial insects like green lacewings, who came to feast on the many aphids this plant attracted. (If you're grossed out by aphids in the garden, Gaura might not be the best plant for you. I cut a couple sprays of flowers to take inside before I realized the stems and especially stem tips were covered in aphids camouflaged as flower buds. Yech.) I didn't treat the gauras with any insecticide or even try to wash off the aphids with water, I just let the predator bugs do their thing and they soon had the problem under control, but I think there always a few aphids on the plants throughout the summer, which actually probably was a good thing as it kept up the predator insect population enough to protect the other garden plants.

In early winter, the stems turn red and then tan. As I recall from last year, they may be a bit of a frizzled mess by spring, but for now, they still have some nice billowy presence to them - and a bit of green at the base. At a time when many other perennials have died back and annuals have plain died, it's nice to have the gaura's presence in the garden. I hope to add more, particularly full-size ones like Siskiyou Pink. Gaura has been very tough and drought-tolerant for me, plus it's survived several typically wet winters despite my heavy clay soil. Other gardeners have not been as lucky with overwintering gaura outside of its native SW climate, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed that these gaura will survive for many more years. And meanwhile, a couple of the gauras have self-sowed to give me a few new seedlings, so I do have a few young next-generation plants in the garden in case the parents shuffle off this mortal coil.

UPDATE 4/2017 - My gauras proved to be short-lived perennials (typically 2-3 years?). I suspect they were killed by a combination of cold temperatures and heavy, wet clay soil. Still, I missed the pretty flowers and long bloom season and just bought a quart-size plant this year. I've tried installing it on a slope where hopefully the drainage will be a little better. We'll see if that helps.

Geranium x cantabrigiense "Biokovo"

Geranium, Cranesbills - All Winners. The Rozanne hybrids sprawled and bloomed from summer through November, while x cantabrigiense 'Biokovo' and sanguineum 'New Hampshire' were much more compact with shorter bloom periods, but beautiful foliage and generally trouble-free plants in morning sun, afternoon shade settings. I know that Rozanne will be completely herbaceous, but I'm curious to see the extent to which the others die back. So far, Biokovo is looking mostly green and beautiful as we head into mid-December! Even if all the geraniums are fully herbaceous, I still think they are wonderful perennials from spring to late autumn in zones 6-7, and I hope to add a couple more Geranium x cantabrigienses in 2014.

UPDATE 4/2017 - I did add more 'Biokovo' geraniums. They're fantastic. Truly one of my favorite, most dependable plants. I think they'd be happier in a cooler and/or shadier setting (most of them get full sun all morning and into early afternoon in the east-facing front foundation). They get a bit wilted, but hang tough through the summer. And they really shine in autumn, winter and spring. They're true evergreens, with some red leaves for bonus color. They form a relatively thick groundcover that excludes weeds, but they spread at a measured pace and are easy to remove if they stray beyond their boundaries. 'Rozanne' is also a nice plant - loooong blooming season. It's probably an amazing garden plant further north. Here, it wilts awfully bad during the summer and seems to be a little short-lived. Maybe 3-4 years? Plus it involves a little more work - benefiting from being trimmed back once or twice a year, and all the dead stems need to be pulled out in late winter (since it dies back to the ground and then comes back from the roots - or not). I do wish to retract my recommendation on G. sanguineum. This plant has turned into a bit of a nightmare. I thought it was spreading too aggressively and overwhelming other nearby plants, so I decided to rip it out. Ha. Geranium sanguineum - or bloody cranesbill - has deep, thick, red roots. They hang on touch and snap easily (at least in heavy clay soil). And the plant regrows from even small root fragments. The upshot - I've dug up certain areas oh, half-a-dozen times trying to get rid of G. sanguineum and probably will be digging all this year trying to eradicate the last remnants. Meanwhile, I've got quite a few holes and blank spaces in my garden where I can't plant anything lest I need to excavate again in a search for G. sanguineum root pieces. Ugh. Don't plant it. (Unless you're in its native range - Europe, far western parts of Asia. In that case, I guess you could plant it if you wanted a really tough, aggressive native romping through your garden.)


Stay tuned throughout the winter for more reflections on how plants performed in 2013. Here's a hint - they weren't all winners! ;-)

June Blooms - Gaura lindheimeri, Love-in-a-Mist, Penstemon digitalis "Husker's Red", Zinnia and Sunflower

One of my goals when I first started planning my garden was to have a long bloom season.

There are plenty of plants out there (ahem, looking at you Azalea and Redbud) that have a week or two of bloom and then are unremarkable or worse (looking at you again, Azalea, with your dried flowers still stuck all over you) for the rest of the season.

By contrast, I like plants that:

a) Bloom for a long time

and

b) Are self-cleaning. That means you don't have to deadhead them because the petals or the entire flower falls off after the bloom is done.

Anyway, here are some of the plants blooming now:

Remember how I was worried a few months ago that my Gaura lindheimeri were dead? Um, they weren't. Those of you who reassured me that the Gaura would bounce back were 100% correct. Two of the three are bigger than ever this year (and the other one is doing just fine too).  Gaura has been covered with flowers now for a couple of weeks. Self-cleaning flowers that drop off and (presumably) add nutrients back into the soil.

Here's a wide shot of two of the Gaura lindheimeri "Siskiyou Pink" plants. This year I have looked closely and noticed lots of bees visiting the flowers. Not bumble bees (at least not so far) or even honey bees, but tiny native bees and/or wasps and/or hoverflies. And since the gaura attract aphids (found this out the hard way when I tried to see if Gaura would make a good cut flower - it doesn't), they also attract ladybugs that eat the aphids. Actually, the microscopic hoverfly larvae also eat aphids. As you can see, the aphids don't slow down the gaura or keep it from blooming. Some folks reportedly even plant Gaura specifically to serve as a trap crop and lure the aphids away from other plants.

I don't have much of a veggie garden this year. Long story. But I did have this one self-sown lettuce growing in a patch of buffalograss. I pulled some other lettuce from the patch and ate it, but I'm letting this one go to seed. I'd guess this lettuce is about 3-feet tall now. Didn't fertilize it at all. The buds at the top have not quite opened yet, but I imagine they will open soon.

Remember a few months ago when I asked whether folks thought all the tiny seedlings in the garden beds were self-sown Love-in-a-Mist from last year? It turns out they were! The plants got MUCH taller this year. Last year they were about 6-inches tall at most. This year, I'd guess that some of them are around 2-feet tall. And they're absolutely covered in blooms. Beautiful blue blooms. Well, actually blooms that start off bluish-white, then change to light blue, then dark blue and finally to the alien-looking purple-striped seed pod you can see here.

LOTS of seed pods. Which I'm guessing will mean lots more Love-in-a-Mist next year! Incidentally, Love-in-a-Mist's Latin name is Nigella damascena. There's another species of Nigella - Nigella sativa - that is supposed to produce edible flavorful seeds used in Indian and Middle Eastern cooking, but I don't know whether or not the Love-in-a-Mist seeds are edible and/or tasty.

Here's a wider shot of Love-in-a-Mist. As you can see, it's attractive from any angle. It's feathery foliage does not shade out other plants, and it seems pretty easy to pull if you find it growing someplace where you don't want it. I've also looked more closely this year and found that - like the Gaura - Love-in-a-Mist also seems to attract lots of little beneficial insects (bees, wasps, hoverflies, etc.)

Here's a new plant that I added to the garden this spring (purchased at Gardens in the Wood of Grassy Creek) - Penstemon digitalis "Husker's Red". As you can see, the plant is covered with flowers right now. These flowers are supposed to attract bees, butterflies and hummingbirds, but sadly I have not seen any on the flowers yet. Perhaps I'd need more plants to grab their attention?

Here's a close-up on the Penstemon flowerstalk. The stalk looks delicate, but it's really quite tough and wiry. We had intense winds rip through yesterday. They knocked over some stalks on coneflower and Phlox paniculata, but they didn't even bend the Penstemon. This plant is supposed to self-sow prolifically. Sounds good to me! In fact, one of the reasons I got the red-stemmed Penstemon is so that hopefully I can identify seedlings instead of mistaking them for weeds and pulling them. (Since most weeds have green stems, at least around here.)

Finally, here are a couple of plants that aren't quite blooming, but almost. And anyway, I think Zinnia buds are beautiful in their own way, like tightly-packed jewels. 

And here's a strong, bushy sunflower too! Can't wait to see its bright and cheerful blooms!

Feeling Like an April Fool...

Gaura lindheimeri "Siskiyou Pink" having a bad hair day. 

So I have to confess that today was somewhat of a low-point in the garden for me.

It was just yesterday that I was jazzed about the good results in the seed-starting experiment.

Eager to maintain forward momentum in the garden, I decided to prune back two of the Gaura Siskiyou Pinks, a task that I had been avoiding for far too long.

Some sources recommend pruning back gauras in early winter, but others suggest leaving the task until early spring. I probably should have done it at least a month ago, but spring here has been so cold and wet that I didn't really feel like it.

The same gaura after a trim. Not much prettier. You can see what looks like a little bit of fresh green growth. That's actually better than the other neighboring gaura I cut back where nearly the whole plant looks dead.

So I went out after an early dinner all bundled up in my winter coat, temps in the high 40s F (~9 C) and a light rain falling.

And here's what got my goat:

1. The gaura looked dreadful. Sure, I had tried to fool myself for the last few months that the curled and frizzed gaura stems gave the garden 'winter interest'. But really, they just looked dead. And when I cut away the old stems (never quite sure how far down to prune the gaura), I found barely any new growth on one of the gauras and only a moderate amount of new growth on the other. Now gauras are supposed to be long-lived in light soils with good drainage, but I'm thinking that a winter with above average rainfall in our heavy clay soil may have done them in. It's frustrating because it wasn't long ago that I was singing the praises of gaura, and now I feel like this is another plant that I have to re-evaluate as to whether I really want in the garden. Sure it looks pretty while it flowers in the spring, and perhaps it gives a brief rebloom in the autumn, but once hot temperatures kick in, gaura stops flowering, it looks fairly awful in winter if not trimmed back (could perhaps solve that last bit by trimming it in late autumn) and it may not survive more than 2-3 years in our climate and soil.

No leaves on the Vitex agnus-castus (Chaste Tree) yet...

2. Here we are in early April and many of the plants are still leafless and bare. I guess I was spoiled by last year's early spring, but the unseasonably (10-20 degrees below average) cold temperatures this year have me yearning for some greenery. And it doesn't help that a number of my plants - Chase Tree (Vitex agnus-castus), crape myrtle, Rose of Sharon - are living up to their reputation as being slow to leaf out. Actually, I knew that crape myrtle would be slow to leaf out. When we bought our house two years ago, the crape myrtles were totally bare and we actually contemplate cutting them down because we didn't like the look of the bare branches. Then the summer flowers came and I was so glad we had decided to keep them. I hope I'll be singing a different tune later this month or certainly by May, but right now I sort of wish that I had added more plants to my landscape like the Beauty Bush which started leafing out last month and now looks fairly decently clothed in leaves.

Why couldn't I have planted more deciduous plants that leaf out relatively early - like this Beauty Bush?

3. Evergreens or semi-evergreens make me happy. Again, this is something I've just realized this winter. And I don't have a lot of evergreens. I'm not talking about conifers - at least not necessarily - but plants like Lonicera sempervivens (native coral honeysuckle) or even the oak leaf hydrangea and sweet woodruff, which look tattered and ragged, but kept a lot of their leaves over the winter and are already sprouting plenty of new growth. I'm also loving the new growth on the three little Aronia plants, but there's nary a bud or leaf in sight on the tiny Calycanthus floridus. I'm wondering if it even survived the winter after a rough first year last year. If I don't see any sign of life in a week or two, I may rip it out and replace it with something that's more than 3-inches tall. Same deal with the Sarcococca confusa. I planted two Sarcococcas last year - one died and the other hung on, but it's not looking good (some leaves yellow, others damaged) and doesn't seem to have any new growth. Perhaps I should cut my losses with that one too rather than doting over a damaged and stunted plant for the next year or two?

One of the few cheery sights in my garden - Veronica "Georgia Blue". Loving the blue flowers. And the foliage stays evergreen! I recognize these are early days - and I have a solid track record of recanting early opinions about plants (see gaura) and mulch (see pine straw), but I have a good feeling about Georgia Blue. I haven't seen how it takes a Tennessee summer yet...

4. Still kicking myself about the pine straw. I've found that I much prefer the pine bark nuggets, but right now I have a mix of areas mulched with straw, areas mulched with nuggets and unmulched areas. Not happy at all with how that looks. Plus there are plenty of weeds in the straw, since they're difficult to pull there. (Some weeds in the nuggets too, but I find I have a much easier time getting those out.) In some cases I've laid the nuggets on top of the pine straw, but mainly I'm trying to move the straw and replace with nuggets. But it's getting hard to find places to put the straw. I hate feeling like I made work for myself unnecessarily, but that's exactly what I did twice over - first when I laid the straw and now when I've had to pull it up and move it. Double sigh.

I'm not crazy about this ajuga genevensis (somewhat swamped by pine straw) but at least it's got green foliage and some small blue flowers, which makes it more attractive than about 90% of my garden right now. Not sure what all the tiny little seedlings are in the bottom right of the photo. I'm thinking/hoping maybe they're sweet alyssum...

Anyway, don't mean to complain, just feeling a little down on myself for making what feels like stupid gardening mistakes.

Have to keep reminding myself that gardening (like anything else) has a learning curve and I'm still on the steep part of that slope. I also know that it's OK to make mistakes - hopefully I just won't make the same mistake twice (or more often than that).

And I know that there are also plenty of hopeful signs - the rapidly spreading and thriving Sweet Woodruff, all the plants that are leafing out nicely, the David garden phlox that is springing up and seems to have multiplied, Stargazer lilies starting to poke through the soil. And there are the happy surprises, plants that I had given up for dead that are coming back to life - a clematis, a Lonicera Serotina honeysuckle, the ballon flower (Platycodon) and a variegated Anise Hyssop. I'm sure there will be many other joyful moments in the 2013 gardening season, but today was a tough one.

Do you ever have days when you beat yourself up over gardening decisions? And what do you do to pull yourself out of that funk?

Meanwhile, here are some more photos...

Russian Sage did great its first year (2011), but performed much weaker last year (2012) with branches losing their leaves and flowers early. Like with the gaura, I think that drainage could be a big part of the problem here. Russian Sage supposedly likes excellent drainage, while we've got heavy clay and lots of winter rain. The plants lost a few branches this winter, but I can't tell if that's because they're dying or if they just got buffeted by the winds. Per instructions, I trimmed the sage back last year, but thinking about leaving it untrimmed this year to see how it responds. If they turn in another weak growing season this year, I may shovel prune all three of them. Too drastic? (Note the weeds growing right through the pine straw. They're a pain to pull through the straw, so I will most likely rake away all the straw, try to find somewhere else to deposit it and replace with pine bark nuggets.)

I think this is a tiny self-sown gaura seedling that I found near one of the Siskiyou Pinks. Species gauras are supposed to self-sow quite a bit, but I've only found this and maybe one other seedling in two years. I had thought that cultivars like Siskiyou Pink were sterile, but it seems like they may be able to self-sow a little. (Alternatively, this could just be a runner from the mama plant...I haven't tried digging around it to find out.)

I'll close on a happy note. This plant looked so awful last year that I contemplated tearing it out. I thought our extreme summer temperatures last year had killed it, but apparently it is tougher than it looked. You're looking at Lonicera periclymenum, a type of  honeysuckle also known as Woodbine. This is a variety called "Serotina" that is supposed to have fragrant flowers and red berries. I'm digging the foliage, which I would call purplish, but Missouri Botanical Garden calls dark green above and bluish green below. I probably should have given it more shade than it has in its current spot. (Mobot says it can take full sun to partial shade, but prefers partial shade.) Supposedly it can grow to 10-20 feet long and may attract hummingbirds. Hope springs eternal!!

Shots in the Garden! (May 13-19, 2012)

Blue Star Creeper (Laurentia fluviatilis), groundcover

Garden Cosmos (Cosmos bipinnatus), also known as Mexican Aster, self-sowing and self-cleaning annual, thrives in heat and full sun

Cosmos again, looking down at a 3-foot tall plant that self-sowed into raised garden bed. Cosmos attracts bees and butterflies for its pollen, as well as gold finches for its seed.

Gaura lindheimeri 'Siskiyou Pink', see May 7th video for more information

Sweet Alyssum (Lobularia maritima), grown from seed, the flowers look more lavender in real life, should bloom spring until frost (with a mid-summer shearing) and attracts butterflies and many small beneficial insects

Rozanne Perennial Geranium, 2008 Perennial Plant of the Year, easy care, forms a spreading mat of attractive foliage topped with stunning purple-blue flowers. Each flower is short-lived, but the plant is self-cleaning and new flowers bloom continuously over a long season.

Dianthus gratianopolitanus 'FireWitch', just planted a couple of weeks ago, has flourished so far in windy and warm conditions that wreaked havoc on other plants. Self-cleaning flowers are supposed to be fragrant on hot, sunny days, but I confess I have not yet gotten down on my hands and knees to sniff and find out!

Viola tricolor, Johnny Jump-Up, also known as Wild Pansy and Heartsease. I have read that the flowers and leaves are edible (which is why I sprinkled the seeds in the vegetable garden among the lettuce), but I'm not sure how to prepare it so I haven't tried any yet. Still, it is a very cheerful little flower that brightens up the veggie garden.

Lonicera sempervivens 'Blanche Sandman'. Also known as Trumpet Honeysuckle, this native vine is supposed to attract hummingbirds. As the flowers unfurl, they remind me of a Dr. Seuss drawing!

Gorgeous Gaura

Do you like tough, carefree plants that bloom for a looooong time (no deadheading required)? Well, you might want to take a close look at Gaura lindheimeri 'Siskiyou Pink'.

Per this bloom chart from Missouri Botanical Garden (one of my favorite gardening information sources), Siskiyou Pink typically starts blooming around the end of May and lasts until the beginning of November!

For more on Siskiyou Pink Gaura, check out this detailed description, also by Missouri Botanical Garden.

I bought these two Gaura (plus one more that is not shown on the video, but is thriving just as well as these) from Bluestone Perennials.